Revive the Drive: An Interview with Lesley Conner from Apex Publications

Apex Publications is currently holding a subscription drive called Revive the Drive. By contributing you not only help an amazing speculative fiction publishing company continue to publish original works, you can also unlock new original fiction, increase the pay for the writers and artists, and help with a website upgrade.

Items for sale start for as little as $3 (the Maurice Broaddus guest edited issue 95).

Onto the interview…

Have you ever received really nasty (or plain crazy) responses to a rejection?

I have gotten some pretty nasty responses to rejections. I’m sure every editor has. Typically when it happens, it’s because the author assumes that their story was rejected due to something personal about the author: snide comments about how we’d buy their story if they were a woman (because we all know women have it so much easier), or they should sue because we obviously rejected the story purely based on their race (which I didn’t know before they responded to the rejection and told me). Those emails really bother me. Honestly, when I’m reading a story, I barely even look at who the author is or where they’re from. And there’s no way for me to know any personal information about them unless they put it in their cover letter. All I’m interested in is whether or not the story is good for Apex.

Now occasionally I’ll get a response to a rejection where the author tells me how much I’m going to regret rejecting the story and it’s already been bought by another magazine and they are going to make that magazine rich and famous because they are SOOOO amazing! Mmhmm, sure you are. If another magazine has actually already bought the story, then you simultaneously submitted to Apex Magazine and the other zine, and we don’t accept simultaneous submissions anyway. Sooo … In this situation, I have not once regretted turning down the story.

What do you personally like best about going through the slush pile, besides finding a gem of a story?

Of course finding an AMAZING story is always the best feeling, but I also really like when I read a cover letter and it says that this is an author’s first submission. Or it’s from a young writer in high school and it’s their dream to be a published author. I always try to be really positive—even if I’m sending them a rejection notice—when interacting with these authors. I want to encourage them to keep submitting, keep writing. This is a tough business. It’s hearing a LOT of ‘no’ among very rare ‘yes’s. So if I can do anything to help a new writer out, I’m going to do it.

What made you decide to go into publishing?

It wasn’t really a conscious decision. I knew Jason Sizemore (Apex’s EiC) from a few sci-fi conventions that we had both attended and saw him post on Facebook that he was looking for someone to help out. On a whim, I volunteered. At the time I was staying home with my younger daughter who wasn’t in school yet and working on my novel The Weight of Chains, so I had free time on my hands. Despite having no prior editing experience, Jason gave me a shot and I started working 5 or 10 hours a week helping with marketing. Six years later and here we are. Best on a whim ‘yeah, I’ll do that!’ moment in my life. J

Do you ever find yourself accepting a story that you like but still needs work? If so, what goes into the editing process between you and author?

Typically the stories we buy are very clean and ready to be published. We work on a very tight schedule, so there isn’t time for a lot of back and forth. This is why it is incredibly important for writers to make sure that their stories are polished and ready to go before they submit. Of course we copy edit every story before publication, but this is only to catch minor things—an awkward phrase or missing word. We aren’t doing major changes.

Best tip on balancing work/ home life/social media?

Balance? Yeah … that would be good to have …

I wish I were joking more than I am, but I suck at balancing my work and home life. I work from home, so … it sorta feels like I’m always working. And sometimes I AM always working, because if something pops up it is really easy to just grab the laptop and deal with it. This is not good. It is not healthy. And I am trying really hard to be better about it.

As for social media, I do have tip: Log out. Yeah, I said it. Log out! I used to keep Twitter and Facebook up and open all the time and periodically throughout the day I’d scan through it. That doesn’t sound that dangerous, but it is. When you do this, you have no idea how much time you are spending just scrolling! That’s time that you could be using to write or work or read; all things much more important that liking a photo posted by someone you haven’t seen in 20 years. Also, I feel like in recent months that Twitter and Facebook seriously depress me. Everyone is so angry and negative all the time (some with good reason, some without) and it was really getting to me. I’d be sucked into reading these long posts and emerge completely beaten down. Even when I could tear myself away to work, I couldn’t focus. So for the most part I stay logged out. I check in on things first thing in the morning while I’m drinking my coffee, and may go back one more time during the day. And that’s it. It’s a small change, but it has really helped me be more productive and happier.

What changes or patterns have you noticed over the past several years regarding the content of submissions?

Submissions are a strange, funny thing. Taken individually or just a handful of stories, you won’t see anything, but when you read a lot of slush, patterns do emerge. Not so much patterns as in ‘this is the future of scifi,’ but more a realization after reading a dozen stories, more than half of them dealt with the sea or ocean in some way. Or suddenly a chunk of stories come in that are all flash fiction. Or maybe you get a bunch of stories that deal with monsters. Sometimes the similarity between a batch of stories is oddly specific—cowboys on Mars—and at that point I have to wonder if another publisher was holding an open call for a themed anthology and we’re seeing the stories that didn’t make the final ToC.

Lesley Conner is a writer/editor, managing editor of Apex Publications and Apex Magazine, and a Girl Scout leader. When she isn’t handling her editorial or Girl Scout leader responsibilities, she’s researching fascinating historical figures, rare demons, and new ways to dispose of bodies, interweaving the three into strange and horrifying tales. Her short fiction can be found in Mountain Dead, Dark Tales of Terror, A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre, as well as other places. Her first novel The Weight of Chains was published by Sinister Grin Press in September, 2015. Best of Apex Magazine: Volume 1 marks her debut experience in anthology editing. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two daughters, and is currently working on a new novel. To find out all her secrets, you can follow her on Twitter at @LesleyConner.